This invention relates generally to electronic communication systems. More particularly, this invention relates to a technique for processing diverse data within standard electronic mail (e-mail) messages.
Over the past thirty years electronic communication has made rapid and significant advances. In the 1960s the primary use of such communications systems was to share information among geographically distributed research teams. Typically this was accomplished via networks such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) using a teletype and acoustic modems. This network tied together universities, government agencies and businesses, and was the forerunner of the worldwide web, or Internet, as it exists today. The information exchanged was typically in the form of text.
The early 1970s saw businesses begin to develop internal networks, or intranets. These systems were characterized by desktop terminals giving remote users the ability to generate and send e-mail to individuals inside the organization. Although the distribution was limited to those inside the organization it greatly increased the communications efficiency within the company.
During the same period the PC, or personal computer, began to appear in larger numbers. These devices allowed a relatively inexpensive system for connecting to networks, greatly increasing the ability to share information. By the late 1970s PCs were becoming commonplace and, accompanied by advances in peripheral electronics such as hardwired modems, fast reliable connection to networks became possible. In the early to mid 1980s the PC was becoming a household appliance and by the late 1980s a PC could be purchased inexpensively, making it a consumer commodity much like a VCR or television set. Private users could connect to the increasing number of sites available on the developing Internet from their homes via the public telephone network.
One result of the commoditization of the PC was a large increase in the volume of e-mail. Using commercially available software in tandem with the burgeoning Internet and associated service providers, PC users could establish individual e-mail accounts. As a result, in 1998 over three trillion messages were exchanged by e-mail in the United States. It is estimated that by the year 2001 there will be 80 million e-mail users in the United States alone. Globally the number is increasing dramatically as well.
Fueled by factors such as the commoditization of PCs, the proliferation of the Internet, and the expansion in electronic communications services, a need for standards became evident. Several standards were developed and continue in use. Examples of these standards include ARPA specifications RFC-821 and RFC-822, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP), and the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) specifications RFC-2045 through RFC 2049. The SMTP, POP, and MIME specifications are the major standards in use at the present time.
However, standards alone present only part of the picture. Demands by the user population for ease of use plus competition for users led to the expansion of the number of providers and the services they offered. The combination of plug-and-play technology for both hardware and software plus the standards mentioned above resulted in inter-platform compatibility for e-mail services. More recently, telephone service providers, or the so-called Baby Bells, have entered the e-mail provider marketplace, expanding the competition and further driving advances in e-mail services.
Indicative of the expanded services offered by telephone service providers is the transmission of text data as part of a Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) signal. The service provider assembles a text message as a series of DTMF characters, sends those characters over the normal telephony channel, where the user""s equipment interprets and displays the characters as a text message. In another example, both the service provider and third parties, such as news services, cooperate to automatically assemble an e-mail message that is personalized to the user""s needs. In this instance, the message is received by the user""s equipment and is displayed as a standard e-mail message. Both of these expanded uses, however, are restricted to simple text messages and thus suffer from the inability to transmit diverse types of data content.
There is a need to transmit more than simple text messages to users of current communications devices. Such services as remote programming or problem solving, remote system verification, user interactive forms and device synchronization are examples of the type of information that would be useful. Each of these more advanced services requires a richer data palette for supporting user requirements mandating more than simple text message content. For example, the service provider or a third party may wish to transmit a graphic image or an application program. Obviously, contemporary methods that send only simple text messages will not satisfy this need.
While there are contemporary examples of remote manipulation of devices, this is typically done via dedicated lines and involves operator or user intervention. An example of such a service is the ability to reconfigure a remote telephone device such as a Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) via Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) over standard phone lines. The method involves compiling a series of receiving apparatus commands at a central service provider site, then sending the commands to the CPE. The disadvantage of this methodology is that it is restricted to commands only, and does not have the simultaneous capability to send standard text messages, graphic images or user interactive forms. Thus this method also suffers from the inability to simultaneously transmit multiple types of data to a remote device.
It would be desirable to provide a method for using an e-mail message to send multiple types of data. Such diverse data could include standard text messages, program code, graphic images, user interactive forms or remote configuration commands. It would be further desirable to use the existing e-mail standards such that no special user equipment would be needed to take advantage of the diverse data content of the incoming e-mail message. A further desirable feature would be the ability to provide automatic updates to user equipment without the need for user intervention. It would also be desirable to provide a reasonably secure transaction environment such that both the user and the sender of e-mail messages could be assured that information in the message would not be compromised. At the present time no method exists which simultaneously accomplishes all of these desirable features.
The present invention describes a data formatting method for embedding diverse data types in an electronic mail message by forming a network compliant e-mail message header, generating one or more command blocks representing diverse data types, and combining the data types with the message header such that the e-mail message conforms to network standards. In operation, data are edited on and sent from a first system, for example, a subscriber service center, by means of a set of custom message commands. The editing system at the sender""s location employs a Graphical User Interface (GUI) enabling non-sophisticated users to create complex mixed data type messages. The mixed data type message may contain commands to reset the configuration of a remote device, for example to change a password or update a device setting. Additionally, other segments, or blocks of the message may contain a graphic image and/or a plain text message. The exact nature of the data depends upon predefined data types.
At the sender""s location the mixed data type message is passed from the graphical user interface to a command formatter which translates the GUI output into a custom command format suitable for the receiving apparatus to interpret. A standard e-mail header is then formed and the two parts of the message are combined into e-mail format for transmission. Once in the proper format, the e-mail message may be transferred over standard e-mail networks using standard e-mail protocols. For example, an e-mail message may be sent over the Internet to a SMTP server using SMTP/MIME protocols. From the SMTP server the message is transferred to the recipient""s POP server where it is stored until the recipient downloads it during an e-mail session.
Upon receipt at the user""s location, and depending upon the content of the data in the e-mail message, the memory apparatus in the receiving device parses the message into segments, decrypts the security code, identifies the data type within each segment, processes the data and executes the resultant commands upon the device. The remote device may either simply store the message for later display by the user or may automatically execute all or a portion of the embedded code contained in the e-mail message. In the case where the e-mail message does not automatically execute, the recipient may retrieve the message and interact with it. For example, where the message contains a data type representing a user form, the user may display the form, interact with it, and return the form to the sender. In a similar fashion, where the message contains a data type representing a graphical image, the user may retrieve the image and display it.
There are a number of advantages associated with the invention. First, the invention extends the MIME protocol, thereby providing the ability to transmit diverse data types in a single network standard e-mail format. A second advantage of the present invention is the ability to update a remote device using standard e-mail protocols. A third advantage of the present invention is the use of a dynamic security key, which eliminates any messages from unwanted senders for example, so called xe2x80x9cspamxe2x80x9d mail.